After dreading the long 12 hour flight to Israel, I was waiting in line in the customs area waiting to be told that I am welcome to visit Israel by getting a stamp in my passport. As I was in the line, I pondered if I should be having a form to fill out as customs in the US requires US Citizens to fill out a one page form and foreign citizens are required to fill out zillions of forms. Thinking since that the US already has high security, I expected Israel to have higher security because of the violence that has appeared in the news media. I looked around and realized that there were no forms to fill out. When it was my turn, I handed my passport and the woman just asked me two quick questions, “How long are you staying in Israel and why are you in Israel?” Within seconds, my passport was stamped. In fact, on my last trip to Israel, the security at the airport was much more lenient than in the States. I did not have to take my shoes off and my belt off. The security was very easy to pass through. While it seems that Israelis have a greater confidence in foreign visitors, they are known for judging people by psychology – human beings’ minds. In the US, Security obviously only judges the book by its cover – their skin color and their nationality. For instance, one of my cousins living in Israel who obviously looks like a European descendent, was traveling from one city in the US to another city in the US by air. Just because his ID said that his nationality is Israeli, which meant that he’s from the Middle East, a security guard literally patted him down and was searching him more thoroughly than anyone else. A friend of mine living in Israel was also traveling from Michigan to North Carolina at one point, and again, because she’s Israeli which meant that she’s from the Middle East, she was forced to be put in a “special” line with all the other Middle Easterners. She was forced to take batteries out of her electronics! Both of them sure did feel humiliated and discriminated against. It really amazes me that the US goes by the book rather than studying the psychology of people’s minds. I thought the US should already have overcome discrimination in our country, but obviously they’re still not there and they have a long way to go! They need to quit discriminating Middle Easterners as they’re not all bad. Regardless of nationalities, in every nationality group, whether it’s the American group or the French group or the Japanese group, there will always be a handful of violent people.